Construction Journal

And here we go, one mast-in-the-rough, all glued up and ready to go. There is a bit of a slight bend to the glued up planks, so I am preparing to mark off a centerline. To do this, I'll measure the half-way spot at each end of the mast, set nails at that point and stretch a long piece of thread between them. Now, professionals out there will use a plumb line and blue chalk, but if you've read this far into my journal, you'll know damn good and well why I'm using black thread rather than a plumb line.

Now that I have a good centerline on each face that compensates for the bend of the timber, I'm going to mark off the points of the width at the various stations called for in the plans. Again, this is roughly every 16 1/2' along the length except for the 12 1/2" section at the bottom of the mast. Hint to the kids: use mechanical pencils. Sure, the leads snap off a lot, but you won't cut your fingers off sharpening your pencil. Save the cutting off of your fingers for much more important steps in the process.

I've picked a likely length of wood to clamp to the points marked along the timber, and now I'm drawing the taper. I'll do this on two adjacent faces. How about this action photo, eh? This digital camera sure makes my arms look hairy. I suppose they are.

With all this chopping up of wood, I began to feel like I needed to pay a little bit back, so I committed to growing a tree in my house. Nice, eh?